The Taming: Book 3 in the Tribe Warrior Series by Imogen Keeper (romantic novels in english TXT) 📕

leveled the rezal. “I’m sorry, Klymeni. When you wake up, he will be dead.”

Merona fired, and Klym went still, her mouth dropping in appalled agony. Shock written so clearly across her features that his heart clenched. His beautiful, sweet, kind-hearted wife always believed in people. And she’d just been shot by her own father.

A tiny dart quivered on her abdomen. A second later she hit the floor.

Merona stared at her, his face paling as if even he was surprised by his actions.

Tor charged, but the pearl thief smacked him in the back of the head with the butt of his rezal so hard he doubled over, his vision blackening. He hit the floor on his knees, screaming through the gag and breathing so hard through his nose that his head spun. He lurched to his feet, throwing his body around, but it was a useless mission.

Klym sprawled on the floor.

“Get him into the interrogation room,” Merona said in a dead, flat voice.

The guard shook the rezal, and Tor walked, as slowly as he could, through the door.

Spiro’s one eyeball rolled at him helplessly. Klym lay staring lifelessly at the wall.

The migane pearl thief kept shoving him in the small of the back with the rezal, forcing him to go faster.

They got to the elevator, and the whole time he was waiting, waiting, waiting. Come on, Agammo. Where are you?

They called the elevator. He stared at Klym.

The elevator doors slid open.

The guards hustled him onto it.

What’s taking so long?

He turned back to see Klym, all that blond hair around her face, her eyes locked on the wall.

The doors slid shut.

45

Just how far would I go?

KLYM STARED AT the closing doors, the floor pressing up hard and cold beneath her. Spiro didn’t make a sound, but her own breaths echoed in the silent halls, spinning in her ears like a raw wound in the aftermath of all Tor’s irate and muffled shouts. How he must loathe being tied and gagged, a man so used to action and control.

She squeezed her eyes together and pressed her fingers into the floor. For a single brilliant moment, when Spiro first said Tor was here, she’d allowed herself to believe they’d be happy. His coming here, risking everything, had been stupid, absolutely, but it was probably the single thing he could have ever done to prove that he cared. He’d risked his life, his kingdom, his country for her, so he could take her home and they could build a life together.

She should have known her father would never let that happen.

Tor should never have come. It would hurt far more to lose him this time.

Spiro lay on the floor, beside the blood from the guard’s nose. For that alone, her father deserved to go to Insuractius. Spiro didn’t deserve that.

For once in her life, she was glad that everyone looked at her and saw nothing but fluff and lace and smiles.

This was far from over.

She pressed her hands into the floor and rose awkwardly to her feet in the overlarge gown. The dart dangled from her stays, and as it swung back and forth, it caught the light.

For the first time in her life, she was grateful for the miserable corset that made breathing impossible, sitting hard, and turned her skin red and welty. She tossed the dart to the floor and bent over Spiro to pull a knife from his belt. “You should have given me one of these when I asked.”

His one visible eyeball rolled.

“What is with you? Why is he so fixated on having us Bond?”

The eyeball rolled again.

“My father shot me.” Her lips quivered, and she wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. She stared at Spiro’s rezal, but she had no idea how to use it, and it seemed more dangerous to rely on it than to go with a knife. She knew knives. She’d held one every single day of her life, three times a day, at every single meal. She trailed her finger down one. This one was bigger and sharper, but it was familiar.

Her father would let Tor go.

She ran down the hall to the elevators and punched the call button.

Where else would clandestine, bloody interviews be conducted other than on the bottom floor?

The ride was long, and her stomach rolled as the elevator rushed down.

The doors hissed open to reveal an endless white corridor that stretched in either direction. Muffled voices sounded from the right. How much surveillance did they have in this building so late at night? Was her father alone with the two guards? Or was more security watching her awkward crouched tip-toe lurch down the hall in a dress the size of a hover?

Tor shouted behind the gag, indignant and furious, and she almost smiled. She’d miss his bellows. So much bluster hid the man who’d given up his freedom and his future to his people.

If he died here, all that would be for nothing.

Her fingers flexed on the handle of the knife, and she wondered for the thousandth time what in the world she would do with it. Kill her father? Kill a guard? Kill herself? This time, she couldn’t meekly hand over the knife and claim not to be responsible for the outcome.

This was on her.

His life depended on her.

And so did Vesta, depending on whatever weapon Spiro and her father had mentioned.

She crouched outside the door to the interrogation room. Tor stood in the center of the room, glaring at them like he couldn’t quite believe he’d ended up there. His broad shoulders stretched back, the tattoo climbing his neck, his hair, messy around his face. That face. Her heart twisted in her chest. Even gagged and raging, he was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen.

One of the guards ordered him to climb onto the metal table in the center of the room.

Tor fake-charged one of them, with a jerk of his shoulders, and one of the guards flinched, his finger dancing toward the trigger.

Klym’s heart